Do you believe that innovation is the path to growth and differentiation? Do you want to create outstanding shareholder returns? If you have decided to embark on your own innovation journey, this article will teach you many lessons learned through Whirlpool Corporation’s long innovation history. Be warned, the results won’t come without some “heavy lifting” but the rewards can be big.

Context

With a history of 101 years, Whirlpool Corporation leads an ultra-competitive and mostly mature industry from a small town in southwest Michigan. Our 70,000 employees generate over $19B in annual revenue by designing, engineering, marketing and selling consumer solutions in more than 135 countries.

After 90 years of constant growth and invention, Whirlpool was looking for a platform to enter the 21st century in a stronger position. We achieved this by focusing on driving consumer preference by embedding innovation as a core competency – which everyone at Whirlpool would be part of. During our first ten years of this innovation transformation, a major acquisition followed by the recession posed new challenges. Emerging and changing players in recent years require us to behave differently. Our 13-year quest for an embedded innovation approach has answered these challenges with creative approaches that have allowed us to stay focused, relevant and competitive. One would think that after the big-bang approach to embed innovation in the early 2000s we would be in auto-pilot by now, but each phase has required the same level of attention from the innovation architects (those creating blueprints and building innovation capability) to take innovation to new heights.

Triggers

One of the essential business skills for leaders as well as innovation architects is having an ability to read the times and knowing what will work for the particular state of the organization, the internal and external environments as well as the leadership in place. There is no single answer or recipe for success, but Whirlpool’s innovation phases can serve as a model for many organizations seeking to make innovation part of their DNA.

Burst: The Sea of White (1999-2003)
As described in Nancy Tennant’s book, Strategic Innovation: Embedding Innovation as a Core Competency in Your Organization, the late 90s represented the beginning of a large transformation: Whirlpool Corporation’s leadership led by Dave Whitwam, Whirlpool’s CEO at the time, was convinced that in order to thrive in the new century it was necessary to create a new platform that would take the company from an operational to a consumer focus. This was the genesis of the Brand Focused Value Creation strategy, in which consumer devotion to the company’s brands would enable Whirlpool to escape what he used to call “the industry stalemate” also referred to as “the Sea of White.” In order to achieve this, all employees would have to become participants of the innovation efforts. This was the genesis of an initiative that in retrospect, changed Whirlpool forever. Every employee would be part of the innovation effort: it would not be exclusive to engineers or be driven only by skunk works efforts. Innovation would come from everyone and everywhere.

Scale: Big time (2004-2008)
Upon Whitwam’s retirement, the new CEO, Jeff Fettig, came with a highly operational approach to bring innovation to its next phase. It was time to Unleash Innovation. In a large organization like ours you cannot just ask people to innovate and expect that it is going to happen. It requires a holistic management system to define it, to make it sustainable, scalable and inescapable. Many of our “innovating innovation” stories came during this era as some of my predecessors reflect:

“What helped to open the box was the sand box. At the beginning the sand box was wide open, well beyond the core business (which is an event in itself for a century-old company which exists only to create "boxes"). This liberated huge pent-up energy to explore, invent, create new businesses, new models, new solutions even without appliances! Then to make the effort sustainable we created a clear sand box, i.e., the definition of innovation which in turn opened up the organization resource leverage needed to scale up any idea and make it a success. So in summary not having first and creating later a sand box was the recipe for going big.” – Giuseppe Geneletti, Director of Communications, Corporate Relations and Strategic Competencies for European Region

“As we looked to move from innovation being driven by separate ‘innovation teams’ in separate ‘innovation rooms’ to innovation by everyone, a major step was to push intact business teams to use the innovation tools to drive new thinking. Teams were asked to go offsite one to two days per month over a period of three months and take part in facilitated innovation sessions, using our Innovation toolkit to drive ideas for new product and business concepts. Often the ideas that came out of the innovation offsites were totally unrelated to the business the teams were dealing with on a day-to-day basis. This is how our Gladiator Brand came about, along with many other ideas across our business. This approach enabled people across the business to gain experience with the Innovation toolkit and helped them understand how these tools could be used to drive new thinking even within their core business.” – Pamela Klyn, General Manager of Cooking Business Team for North American Region

Up a notch: What Goes Around Comes Around (2008 – today)
It was during this phase that we learned that an innovation capability doesn’t necessarily follow a conventional maturity model. It was in 2010, during the preparation of our 100-year anniversary celebrations, that we challenged ourselves to define the new role of innovation in a new era. There was a general sense that innovation required a new, higher platform to help us deliver a promise of value creation for our shareholders for the next hundred years and to create more relevance to our strategic direction of growth beyond the core. It was time to turbo-charge innovation.

Key Innovations & Timeline

Intended to either initiate, to scale or to improve upon our innovation capability, our management innovations have one thing in common: they are all purposeful initiatives, not accidents. They required real organization resources, prioritization and attention from management groups to succeed. This section highlights the ones that have delivered the most impactful results and lessons that we believe can serve others in search for an inescapable innovation capability.

It is not trivial even in today’s world, that when engineers, designers and marketers speak the same language the power of innovation is unlocked. The adoption and adaptation of the double diamond innovation process and its set of tools was key to demonstrating that an established organization could transform itself through its own people and that everyone can innovate. During the years after its initial adoption, our toolkit has continued to evolve to become more accessible and the process has become more integrated with other systems as a means to generate scale.

Exhibit 2 – Whirlpool Corporation’s Triple Diamond Process

Seeing is believing

Surfacing deep consumer insights is one of the most powerful innovation drivers. During the discovery process this lens is always a must. As a company that does this for a living, we have access to a massive amount of consumer data generated and managed by experts in the field. While leveraging this information is important, a mandatory consumer immersion goes a very long way for the team and for any innovation project. Every time an innovation project is initiated, the teams are asked to create a plan to extract consumer insights by first-hand observation; the use of some tools allows them to create a relevant and robust plan. See exhibit 3 for an example of a consumer insight immersion.

Exhibit 3 – Consumer Insight Example

The level of empathy, context, and passion that is generated will never be achieved by reading 1,000 reports. The results of the immersion approach are synthesized in insights that become the DNA of an innovation project from this early stage until launch and advertising campaigns are created. See exhibit 4 for an example of a consumer insight as output from the discovery work.

Exhibit 4 – Consumer Insight Example

Scaling mechanisms

Management Systems – Making innovation part of everyone’s job and hard-wiring it to its modus operandi requires holistic management system thinking. We work across the elements of this system with the help of the framework illustrated. Read tne Hack: Change the Systems, Free the People for a detailed description of Management Systems.

Exhibit 5 – Management Systems Framework

Definition

If there is one thing that has been consistent throughout the eras, it is our innovation definition (see exhibit 6). The Executive Committee came to the realization that a clear and concise definition was needed as the decision to scale innovation was made; this would provide clarity, allow us to goal it, and avoid many future discussions about what is innovation and what is not. Sr. leaders were going to be assigned an annual innovation pipeline target– How would that be measured? How would we know how good it was? These and other questions forced this group to think deeply about the purpose of innovation and the results that were expected from it. The result was the innovation definition which represents the essence of why we do innovation and serves several purposes:

Creates a global, common understanding of what we mean when we say innovation and how innovation is supposed to serve our strategy

Brings clarity to grey areas and encourages individuals to raise their work to that standard

Allows us to measure and goal innovation (and the work of those in charge of it) accurately

Exhibit 6 – Whirlpool Corporation Innovation Definition

Classification

One thing is to define innovation and another is to have everyone understand it. A scaling mechanism that helped us achieve that was a tool called the “i-box.” Through the use of this tool, teams around the world measure their projects against the innovation definition and put innovations at test. Through its practice and this common language, they have the right conversations and challenge themselves in areas that would improve the “innovativeness” of a project. See Exhibit 7 for an example of the i-box and helpful materials for a full version of it.

Exhibit 7 - Sample of i-box

Innovation metrics

Once innovation is categorized, we can point to it and measure it. Metrics are directly tied to the definition and focus on the results of our innovation efforts. Whirlpool runs SAP, and for us to measure our innovation at scale we had to modify the system by including a flag on SKUs that identifies when a product meets the definition. This change allows us to run reports to size our pipeline and see the returns innovations are generating in the market (i-revenue and profit lift).

Exhibit 8 – Depiction of Innovation Metrics

The results of the metrics are tracked via an Innovation dashboard that allows us to look at the different metrics in their totality, by region and by major product category.

Exhibit 9 - Innovation Dashboard

100-day plans

It is amazing what a pragmatic limitation on time and resources can do for innovation projects. After teams present the results of the front-end of innovation process and pitch ideas to leadership to get funding, they are asked to prepare and execute a 100- day plan: an experiment no longer than 3 months and costing no more than $10,000 to answer the most important questions that would make or break the project. This approach injects a sense of urgency and sparks an unexpected level of creativity to validate the project hypotheses. This approach is not intended to replace formal consumer research when the time is appropriate, but it forces team members to put some of the most important hypotheses to test. It is always beneficial to have experts supporting this approach to avoid confirmatory bias, a common flaw of asking questions so we get the answers we want. This is also an appropriate time to engage some of our trade customers so we can win their hearts so we can together win the consumers’ hearts. An overview of a 100 day plan is presented in exhibit 10.

Innovation processes are typically focused on the front end. Ours is called the Double Diamond (Discovery & Opportunity Development); they are diamonds because we diverge and converge. But what happens when, 1) an innovation is so disruptive (or unfamiliar) that it requires constant monitoring and adjustment? Or 2), the go to market of some products has to be re-evaluated? To address these two areas we added the Third Diamond of the process we called “Deliver and Grow” also known as “Launch and Love”, emphasizing the need for nurturing innovations in the marketplace.

I-turbo projects

As we took innovation to a new level, we felt it was necessary to create a platform to make our portfolio more aggressive and diversified. The i-turbo projects were created to infuse this new stretched thinking, support our expansion beyond the core and to accelerate capability building. To achieve these objectives new inputs and management systems were implemented: Each region would run a full frame-breaking discovery phase to generate new, breakthrough ideas. In the Discovery phase, frame-breaking refers to the approach we use to force radically new thinking in a team and a project. This doesn’t necessarily occur every time (although it is encouraged) as it is not always needed. It needs to be carefully planned. It is achieved when new learning is injected into projects in the form of lenses or “new voices” introduced in a planned and methodical way. As a result of this initiative, the innovation competency got a full refresh and level of excitement that resulted in the creation of the Strategic Megatrends, a confluence of trends that would serve as the sandbox for the creation of new innovation projects. See Exhibit 11 for an example of a Strategic Megatrend.

Exhibit 11 - Example of a Strategic Megatrend

Frugal Innovation

As innovation gets momentum and our beyond-the-core strategy continues to advance, the demand for R&D resources increases, pushing Whirlpool to improve its technology capability to rapidly develop new knowledge and technologies while containing costs, budgets and investments in R&D. “Doing more with less” has therefore become an expectation and a structured practice. To develop new knowledge while rationalizing the project expenditures, Whirlpool innovated in its approach to generate technology innovation by opening up the R&D boundaries through the implementation of an Open Innovation strategy for R&D to de-risk innovation and research activities while leveraging public funding and incentives. This has required a significant mind shift of the way our engineers work as they were not always used to "opening the gates” to establish and nurture a true collaborative approach with external partners. Furthermore, a change in the technology development strategy was put in place to create flexibility and align the internal technology roadmaps with the requirements of the public bodies. To enable and support this transformation, Mauro Piloni, Vice President of R&D established the External Funding and Open Innovation (EF&OI) unit in 2011. This unit is led by Enrica Monticelli, 2012 winner of the “International Prize for Women and Technology” in innovation, and acts as a catalyst to different needs coming from the internal R&D categories, proactively managing and coordinating our technology strategic partnerships and the application to public funding initiatives against our roadmaps.

Challenges & Solutions

Balance embedment with centers of excellence

We started this journey with the notion of embedment from the beginning. After the initial phases the roles would morph and be embedded in the business, spreading the seed into their own organizations. We stuck to our plan, and as the initiative scaled, innovation managers were assigned into every major category around the world as the central teams dissolved. Natural rotation, combined with infusion of new talent over time started to impact the purity of the process; the intensity of the initial rollout was not there anymore and for many that burst was something they only heard about. It was not uncommon to also see some, newer people driving innovation in their own way which in some cases made things confusing. We struck a better balance of embedment and sustained capability with the creation of the centers of excellence, organized mirroring our global/regional structure. Not only do these centers support the hundreds of employees innovating day-in and day-out but they also serve as hubs for talent development and keep the regions going with the most up-to-date tools, techniques and relevant content from around the world. The general structure and responsibilities of these Centers of Excellence or C.O.Es are as follows:

Global C.O.E. - Formed of one global director and 4 innovation consultants. Our vision is to deliver the promise of innovation as a catalyst and driver of quality of sustainable growth. The primary responsibilities of the team are:

Advancement of innovation capability

Custodians of innovation process, tools, systems, assets and metrics

Consulting support for key innovation projects and initiatives

Incubation of the futuristic and non-traditional projects and initiatives until they become material for the broad organization

Identify and develop top innovation talent

Regional C.O.Es - Each regional C.O.E. is responsible for driving day-to-day innovation activities and projects within the regions, serving as on-the-ground embedment, execution and consulting arm. Whirlpool has C.O.Es in North America, Latin America, Europe and Asia. Each team is a little different varying from 2 to 6 total innovation experts. Each region also has a new business unit organization in charge of incubating non-core and non-product initiatives usually working elbow-to-elbow with the regional C.O.E.

New Generations, New Approaches

When we started to bring innovation to a larger audience during the “Big Time” era, there was such an excitement in the air that the format, style and visuals of our toolkit went virtually unnoticed. Once this innovation approach was in place in the broad organization, certain things seemed more important and we noticed that the way materials were presented had a significant impact in the results of our innovation sessions. Our Latin America team led by Mario Fioretti and Ana Lopes took an innovative leap to solve this problem turning our innovation playbook into a fresh-looking, inviting and fun package that creates curiosity just by its look. A powerful way to teach innovation tools is to make them as engaging as a board game. This allows teams to play scenarios, get an understanding of the big picture and get engaged in the design of initiatives. This new approach has started to increase a pull, generating more demand for innovation practice.

Exhibit 12 - Whirlpool’s Innovation Playbook and Toolkit

Maintaining sharp focus and a broad perspective

Even when innovation is integrated in the strategy and considered as a key competency, it requires awareness and responsiveness to what is going on in the business. Many times the business priorities can be seen as obstacles. Practicing innovation every day and being aware of what is happening also teaches us a lot about how to make it more attractive, relevant and palatable to the organization. One of the main responsibilities of innovation teams in charge of building capability is to have a pulse on the organization and make the necessary changes and improvements to the innovation approach. Many times this can be painful but we must recognize that things that took us to a place may not be the ones that will take us to another, better place. An approach I’ve used to keep this perspective is to do a year-end analysis of our global work as innovators keeping a broad perspective in mind and basing the plans of the following year based on our conclusions. Executing these plans is easier said than done and there is no one single way to get buy-in but I have some tips that might be helpful:

Bring it up when it is relevant – There are always moments when somebody picks on something you’ve been thinking about. Grab that moment and say something like “Absolutely! We could even do this and that…” make that person a partner and push hard from that moment on

Learn to shut up – Many times we are so anxious to share a lesson or propose an initiative that we can overwhelm people or get rejection if the time is not appropriate. If the moment is not right, shut up; the time will come.

Use business speak – Put it in terms that are relevant to leaders and that will directly benefit their business. For example: “If we spend 3 days in a relatively large workshop, you will create a bank of refined ideas that will be relevant for the next two-three years and you will be able to put all your energy on execution moving forward.”

Leverage captive audiences – There is no better time than the kick off of a project when you have 20-30 faces staring at you that you send one or two powerful messages to the audience in the opening remarks. If they can connect that to their project, you can gain a number of supporters. If a powerful person is in the audience and creates that connection, you’ve got a win.

Share big issues in confidence, gain advocates – It is ok to be provocative at times but there are some things that you just can’t say in public. Leverage moments of confidence with those you trust, share your concerns and brainstorm solutions. This will help when you have an opportunity to do any of the above.

Benefits & Metrics

This long journey has had an impact on all of our stakeholders:

Customers - By our definition innovation delivers unique consumer solutions. One of the results of satisfying consumers is not only the immediate satisfaction of a particular solution but loyalty over time, which translates into longer term value creation. And when people love your products they come back to you.

Trade partners – In our industry this group plays an important role. Innovation has impacted our relationship with them in positive ways: 1) Before we sell our innovation to the end consumer we must to sell it to the trade. Our deep consumer understanding and creative approach to consumer solutions makes our negotiations meaningful in consumer terms. 2) Engaging the trade in certain phases of the process allows them to more deeply understand the customer and translate the learning into new sales approaches in the merchandising of the product. 3) The “voice of the sales associate” is an important input into our discovery and go-to-market processes allowing us to identify solutions that help them communicate the benefits to the customer in “the moment of truth”, when the consumer pays for our product.

Suppliers – Suppliers are an important part of the innovation “value chain”. They have been directly impacted by the supplier innovation program established by Terry Deegan during the “Big time” era. In this program suppliers were familiarized with our end consumer and engaged in ideation. This created a new level of supplier advocacy and a more open relationship with them. For a detailed view of how this can be done read the “Multiplying Your Brain Power and Capacity” hack.

Employees - Innovation has been a significant driver of engagement and attraction. This can be measured in our internal annual surveys, but cannot effectively communicate the level of passion, pride and excitement of employees who participate in innovation. It is very common for those of us who have innovation in our title to be approached unexpectedly by people telling us about their experiences and asking how to become more involved. For many, Innovation was the reason to join Whirlpool. Once candidate employees see behind the curtain and realize how innovation is a big driver of the company’s performance and aspirations they get inspired to engage and participate.

Shareholders – It almost goes without saying that innovation has played and will continue to play an important role in attracting investors. I encourage you to listen to any of our investors calls and pay attention to how frequently the word innovation is mentioned – it is embedded in our strategy and is the fuel for consumer relevance and margin realization.

Change of an industry and a Company – It would be very hard to depict 13 years of transformation in one page, but if we could see a snapshot of it we would notice that despite being primarily utilitarian products, appliances have dramatically changed as unmet needs are addressed. Looking at innovation from a broader perspective and not only as a means to bring new appliances to market, has allowed Whirlpool to expand and strengthen offerings outside its core business with solutions in adjacent markets like Gladiator Garageworks™, Affresh®, EcoHouse Water Filter leasing or even icons like KitchenAid® small appliances.

Exhibit 13 – Transformation of the Industry

Average Sales Value

Despite our ongoing efforts to continue to bring innovation to the market, during the 1990s the average sales values in the industry were declining given very intense competition and day-to-day fights on the retailer floors. As we started the new phase and structure of innovation, there has been a reversal of that trend driven by the introduction of solutions that consumers value and are willing to pay for (See Exhibit 14).

Before a new product or service hits the market, and once it passes an opportunity business plan, we classify it if it meets the innovation definition and estimate its steady state revenue. This is the pipeline measure which has continued to grow since we started measuring it. Once innovations hit the market and while they continue to meet our criteria, we measure the revenue (i-revenue) they generate. As innovation is intended to drive better returns than our base business (as the third element of our definition calls for), we also measure the profitability increase (or “lift”) that innovation delivers in the market. At the end of 2011 our innovation revenue accounted for $3.6 billion, close to 20% of our total revenues.

Exhibit 15 – Growth of Innovation Pipeline and Revenue

External recognition - The innovation progress of organizations is increasingly observed. Whirlpool Corporation has been broadly recognized for its innovation impact as some of the many awards and mentions of renowned publications testify. 2011 examples are: Most Innovative Company by Negocios Magazine in Brasil, Fortune’s #1 Innovation Ranking for Home Equipment, 2011 Edison Awards, among many others.

Leading the innovation chart - Innovation as a competency is still a new and evolving field. Whirlpool was one of the first, well-established companies that took a bold approach of transformation. We’ve continued this effort over the last 13 years. We are often benchmarked, and this demand proves to us that we are seen as a leading organization in this practice. I’ve had the opportunity to share my experiences with many companies that are in the process of starting their own journey.

Lessons

Defining innovation is a big part of making progress

Defining what innovation is has a significant impact on your overall innovation efforts. I believe that every company that has an innovation effort should spend defining innovation and making sure that the innovation initiatives are aligned to it.

Embedment curve fallacy

Maturity model theory helps us differentiate ad hoc practices versus formally adopted processes. We entered our journey with that mindset of expecting to go through its phases from the initial and possibly chaotic launch to a continuous improvement stage. As we reflect on this 13+ year journey, we think innovation doesn’t follow this software-driven theory so closely. Innovation is still a growing and evolving business practice and our experience tell us that the level of intensity and initiatives to make it work depend on the business priorities and the internal and external environments. Without an in-depth study, we could venture to say that our maturity curve looks more like this:

Exhibit 16 – Maturity Model of Innovation

Innovators must spend time innovating

Metrics give us a pulse of our progress, establish benchmarks and allow the organization to make rational decisions on a number of dimensions of the innovation efforts. However, metrics should serve the business and not the other way. The job of innovation architects is to protect innovation executors from becoming servants of the metrics and distracting their innovation efforts by spending time in irrelevant data gathering. This can be accomplished by establishing the right levels of granularity in the data, simplifying the reporting processes and hardwiring innovation data with information systems, automating it to the extent that is practical without losing sight of the big picture and the intent of the metrics.

Manage tensions

Innovation is expected to drive new thinking, to be different. In established companies innovation initiatives may go against the grain of what people in the organization are used to doing or simply cause a reaction as they may challenge standard operating procedures or accepted behaviors. This generates tensions in the organization. These tensions allow the organization to make progress and raise the capability level. Innovators should learn to assess the organizational readiness and dial programs and initiatives to keep a positive balance when these tensions surface.

The best innovation is the next

As innovation initiatives take off there is a sense of excitement and optimism. Many times innovations are not as successful as expected or successful at all. This applies to innovations in the marketplace as well as innovation initiatives within the organization. When things don’t work, it is easy to give up, get discouraged and move on to the next thing. Making innovation a mindset and not an initiative is what makes the difference. Taking the failures as lessons, adapting our concepts and persistently trying to improve upon our previous attempts are what sustain innovation in the long run. Being able to go through the initial stages successfully, assessing the progress, and adapting or evolving the initiatives are what can ultimately transform an organization. Leadership plays a very important role in taking failures as lessons and encouraging the organization to take risks. Isn’t it a bigger risk to do nothing?

In summary, our experiences reveal that:

What worked once won’t necessarily work again

We always need to assess the ecosystem and the times and design our initiatives to match them

We should always actively manage the tensions and management systems

And...

Innovation can be taught and is not exclusive to a few privileged brains. When equipped with the right tools and support system, anyone can innovate. The fruits of innovation are results of the hard work (yes, innovation is very hard work) of a broad and increasingly growing segment of an organization.

The i-box was used as a scaling mechanism to help team understand and align to the innovation definition. The document was the basis of discussions and allowed us to advance the thinking in the innovation related of the projects.

Appendix 2 - Graphics

To facilitate the view of the graphics in the article, the attachment puts all of them in a printable PDF format

A very thorough, insightful look at how the appliance maker re-invented itself to prevent commoditization of it's products and business model. In addition to the internal transformative process described above Whirlpool also developed a noted parallel process to engage key suppliers in developing their own Innovation skills to increase overall value

I think that "we" think the same and can fully agree to the sentance "It is amazing what a pragmatic limitation on time and resources can do for innovation projects. " as constraints lead to innovation and if you find a method that works for you that can foster innovation through systematic constraints - you can be extremely creative!! tha "Sand Box" is a good example that shows how we can evolve through and INSIDE THE BOX thinking and creating process. its looking at what you have and exploring the reasources to comeout with new ideas. i like it a lot !
thanks for the article, it speaks for itself

Omri, I believe that pragmatic approaches can drive great results but the way some of these things are driven matters a lot to, that can only be achieved with the right tools and experts to make it happen. I believe your team has an approach that enables these types of results. Thanks for your comments.

Claiming how good we are at innovation is easy, but this article proves how far the horizon was set, how high the bar against which we compare ourselves in terms of real innovation. Whirlpool is to innovation what Toyota is to productivity.
Congratulations Moises and Moises' team for setting the path.

Rodrigo, thanks for your nice comments. It is humbling to be compared like that even though I think we have a long way to go. Setting the bar high is what allow us to make progress and always challenge ourselves to do better.

Abraham, thanks for your comments. Structure is important where structure belongs. More than anything our process is a framework and a methodology for work, procesizing it too much kills the creativity. The most important of all is the mindset or the principles applied throughout its application.

All companies are forced to innovate. The innovation has become a critical success factor. This article is very comprehensive, shows beyond theory how to build successfull businesses in a competitive world. Congratulations Moises and Whirlpool, thanks for sharing

Carlos, thanks for your comment! There has certainly been a massive change at Whirlpool during this time. Interestingly, not driven through traditional change management principles. That theme alone is probably worth an article in itself that I hope I can write in the future.

Whirlpool has been and continues to be a source of inspiration to us in the Toy industry. Moises has done a great job of supercharging the process and his organization. the article captures the core aspects! great job.

Tom, thanks for the comments. I can imagine the challenges the Toy industry faces these days with the evolving wants from children and the electronics becoming a "toy" of choice from early developmental stages, I think that adopting approaches we've used can certainly help in product differentiation.

Fascinating case -- thank you for sharing it! I especially valued your discussion of metrics (and that they have to be at the right level of granularity). Thank you also for the templates and helpful materials, those are very valuable in helping us implement some of your ideas.

Andrea, appreciate your comments. I believe in the open sharing of some of the management elements we've created like the templates I shared can only help us advance as we get reactions from people in the outside. The key to success and competitive advantage relies in the holistic management system and its execution, not on its elements.

Impressive story and approach. I believe valuable lessons are built into your messages for any industry, at the end of the day innovation without disciplined processes is more an accident than a sustainable success.
On the other hand I see a lot of the innovation focused in the line of products itself rather than the daily approach for everyone in the company to fulfill their role. Taking innovation from its commercial aspect to a lifestyle / workstyle is a challenge. How can we assure everyone innovates, everyday? I bring this out because this is a challenge that I believe has been somehow addressed at Whirlpool and would love to know more about.
Finally, I love the "Launch and Love". Is this also built on a full PLM (Product Lifecyce Management) process? If it does not, I believe there is huge potential in it. Cheers!

You are correct, our focus is primarily driven to consumer solutions, I would not say strictly products as there are offerings that fall into our innovation definition but are not necessarily phisical products.That has been our choice for our innovation focus but the point is well taken. In fact, many of our innovation tools and creativity, combined with some six-sigma ones are part of a "problem-solving" approach that encourage and support people to think differently, the challenge with this is to create a mindset that permeates across the organization which quickly leads us into a corporate culture discussion. Launch and Love is not built into PLM (yet) and yes, I think there's huge potential. Thanks for your insightful comments.

Thanks, Moises, a very good article. What's also clear from your experience is that every few years innovation practices need a review and major relaunch. in order to create new momentum and fresh energy. It's similar to a consumer brand with a new ad campaign.

I think the analogy is a good one. In fact one of the things that is important in this journey is to develop a brand for your own internal innovation and as you suggest, re-launch as appropriate. Thanks for the comment.

Moises - this is an inspiration to us all. Whirlpool have truly created a system for innovation that spans the whole organisation. I especially appreciate the combination of using customer insights to spark the process and the i-box to help you keep track of whether or not you are getting enough breakthrough ideas.

The i-box helps us stay true to our goals. It is a dangerous tool if not applied correctly. We encourage the teams not to fill the tool for sake of fulfilling a requirement but to document their thinking, making this a living document that moves with the product during its commercialization. Thaks for your comments.

Bud, thanks for your comment, I agree. I also believe that what makes innovation sustain is its integration in the organization's strategy. Not matter what the sign of the times force you to do, the leadership in place, or the new processes in vogue, if your strategy is to drive sustainable differentiation, innovation is the answer. The challenge in large and established organizations is that structures do not naturally support and foster these approach, and that is when creating an organizational competency and management systems to drive it make a difference in the long run.

I've been sharing this story widely because it is rich and powerful in all the ways readers have already commented.

The aspect that particularly intrigues me is the third diamond: Launch and Love.

I'd be interested to know whether your team is using storytelling in this phase, and if so how. Stories capture the ways in which customers experience and articulate a product's value to their lives. This can be useful pre-launch but also stories may provide compelling feedback into the improvement or innovation cycle.

I believe storytelling can be a powerful 'lens' in the Third Diamond - I think we use it in some way. One of the inputs into this phase is the articulation of the voice of the consumer. When this manifests as a story, it can be better internalized by innovation teams and those involved in the process of generating the solutions to improve upon or adapt the innovation. Thank you for sharing my story, I hope it is useful for people in the pursuit of innovation.

Thank you for your comment. I agree with your observation and I would also say that probably one of the most challenging things to overcome is the mindset at a broad organizational level given the different priorities that prevail throughout organizations. I can testify though, that once people get exposed to the results that having the mindset can achieve, they become believers and advocates.

I enjoyed the article very much. The length of Whirlpool's journey provide unique lessons about adapting innovation efforts to support changing strategic contexts. Your article provides an interesting picture of how this evolution occurred, all while maintaining focus on essential innovation principles. Thanks for sharing this.

Hi Chris, as I've learned from some of the masters at this, acting with the principle in mind is one of the most important elements, if not the one, that brings success to innovation. Thanks for your comment.

Moises, I am a MBA student and we were asked to read your article as part of a homework. It is incredible to find the story of such successful organization as Whirpool so thoroughly explained. It is remarkable the organization´s capacity to find its way through the market changing their strategy when needed - even though innovation is the leading factor. Few companies consider manager involvement and high employee participation as part of their growth project towards the future. And times do change; so should your products and services as Whirpool has experienced. Thank you for sharing this knowledge which hopefully will provide many new good ideas in other organizations.

Mariana, I am honored that someone asked students to read as an assignment. I truly appreciate your comments. If the assignment had a report out I'd love to hear your conclusions. Innovation is an exciting field and I hope that this article inspired some of you to pursue it. Best wishes.

Mr. Norena tells the story of how a Midwest appliance manufacturer competing in a commodity product changes itself into an innovative global consumer goods company. Rarely do we get such an insightful inside look at how this is done. There is much we can learn from Mr. Norena's article.

Clearly Moises knows his area of expertise very well. Furthermore, Whirlpool continues to build an environment of trust that encourages curiosity and freedom to experiment. This paper is an outsanding example. Well done!

Moises has offered many useful lessons here. One of the most useful is debunking the myth that at some point your innovation engine or system can go onto cruise control. All companies need to continuously attend to developing, maintaining, and updating their innovation system and culture. This article provides specifics and makes that point in very tangible fashion.

Innovation is fuel for growth and having the right structure and mindset is a must for celebrating constant success. The way Moises is presenting innovation in this article touches all points which enterprises and individuals need to address. Impressively complete.
The one that finds me very inline is that “the best innovation is the next”…key is mindset and again mindset!

Whirlpool is very dedicated to using consumer insights as a foundation to all it's innovation processes. It also constantly seeks to unite commonality of global needs while respecting local cultural needs.

It's particularly heartening that Whirlpool is doing it's magic in Michiana. "Harbor Country" is primarily a tourist and agricultural region and Whirlpool is one of the few remaining large employer manufacturers. Their presence in the region is essential and their success, through on-going deliberate innovation, is a case study in economic leadership. This is a great comprehensive article that really goes behind the curtain, and the transparency, and openness to share tools, techniques, and frameworks is greatly appreciated. Kudos Moises, and Kudos Whirlpool, may your journey continue.

Very intersting article and defenitly will be a challenge to involve our suppliers in this holistic vision currently the suppliers are part of us and this model can help to acelerate their vison in our innovation jurney, the metrics that currently mesure our suppliers must be re orineted according to the innovative demand that we are creating.

Moises, thanks for this article. The industry transformation and the impact of innovation on that transformation are incredible. I appreciate the emphasis on listening, focusing on customer preference, and surfacing consumer insights as catalysts of innovation. Also getting many people in the organization involved, and the willingness to respond and change in the name of solving customer problems. Thanks again for this insight. Martin

It is so true when you mention about surfacing deep customers insights is the most powerful innovation drivers.
I work for Freescale Semiconductor, one of the Whirlpool's suppliers, and having in touch w/ our clients and customers is basic to grow together, innovate and do the R&D.
I am so glad to hear when clients and suppliers work together there is always a win-win scenario.
Great paper....

For some time I have appreciated the long-term horizon embraced at Whirlpool (and by its patient innovators) to pursue the random walk of innovation success, which as we practitioners know, is NOT linear and sometimes even retrogrades into lower levels of maturity at points. Thank you for the clarity, candor and commitment to put this out there!

Thank you for sharing this extraordinary journey about the history and the evolution of the innovation in Whirlpool Corporation. I enjoyed the way you connected, the innovation deployment through the understanding of the consumer insights, the company processes, the execution and the follow up after lunch as critical process on the successful lunch the new product innovation. With your explanation in layman's terms it was easy for me to grasp the essence of all the complexity and effort needed to create the innovation into the company culture.

I have been following the progress of your program at Whirlpool for several years and continue to believe you are on the forefront of developing Innovation as a business discipline.

Your understanding of holistic elements, as shown in Exhibit 4, required for making Innovation part of everyone job is
often the major blind spot of other programs. Without that understand, developing a innovation framework can be fundamentally flawed.

I also appreciate your sharing your i-pipe growth metrics, Exhibit 7. These types of hard metrics are scarce at this point of maturity for most other programs. Hopefully, more organizations will track similar metrics moving forward to provided further justification for formalizing their innovation programs.

I liked this article, I believe that it could be so much better if it included some links to explanations into the whirlpool jargon like: sandbox and Sea of white. It's so good that I think that I'm now biassed into looking especially into whirlpool in the next appliance I buy, specially if it's something of the Gladiator brand, that garage is rad.

Thank you very much for sharing this journey with the level of insights and details that made it very educational. I particuarly liked your comments on "seeing is believing" and "launch and love". That really shows me your metrics are giving you deep insights on what drives in-market success.

Thanks Moises for sharing Whirlpool story; I can testify the pride on Whirlpool employees, I have seen it. I work for a company that supplies User Interfaces for Whirlpool ("TouchSensor, LLC") and have had the opportunity to visit different facilities and Whirlpool design centers. Your story has helped me to see what is the backbone of Whirlpool movement!

I can also see some of the elements of Innovation helping not only our companies but also they can relate to our own communities and families, i.e. understanding neighbors or family members, involving everyone, not blocking, etc.